The Lamp Lighter

The Lamp Lighter

William P. Chappel

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The city slumbers as a lamplighter makes his rounds, ladder and lantern in hand, in one of only three evening scenes in the series. The waxing crescent moon casts soft shadows on lower Broad Street, but the tranquility of this work belies potential perils lurking in the dark streets. As early as the 1760s, the city’s Common Council attempted to discourage nighttime muggings and robberies by installing whale-oil lamps maintained by municipal lamplighters. It would not be until the 1820s that the dim light from the smoky, unreliable whale-oil lamps was replaced by the luminous glow of a new technology—gas light.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.